Miserable in Paradise

When battling training daemons it's best not to be alone...

I never got home sick as a kid, but I sure do now and I'm just realizing that's a part of what it is that is plaguing my trying to do mountaineering and altitude adjustment while by myself.

Thur, Fri, Sat I was up at Mt Shasta's Horse Camp (run by the Sierra Club). I had multiple purposes in mind. The most important was to invest the time to adjust to the altitude to see if that made a difference in the AMS that I'm prone to get. The good new is that plus Diamox kept me from getting sick.

The bad news is that after 24 hours I was miserable missing Terri, Yoshi and Trek, plus I was dealing with feelings of being a failure (at mountaineering, but you know how these things get generalized in one's head - sigh.)

While there I wrote this somewhat pathetic missive:

Thur Arrived 5:30pm [it's a 1.25 snow hike up to Horse Camp from Bunny Flat]
Fri At Horse Camp acclimating.
Midday - I will leave at midnight [for a training climb - which I wussed out on and didn't leave till the morning]. The spring isn't running yet. Caretaker is concerned.
I never count on how depressed I get when I'm away from Terri & the dogs.
This is tricky as for me to aclimate takes extra time [at least 36 hours or so], but I so much want to leave now. This doesn't bode well for my mountaineering future.
On the Alaska trip [a week long class on an Alaskan glacier] which started on a Sunday, by Tuesday I wanted to go home despite being in one of the most beautiful places on Easth - the Ruth Glacier.
I love physical challenges but I need to find somethng that takes less time. I joke that I should take up something simple like riding centures [100 mile bike rides].

Wonder if something I'm taking is affecting me. I need to Google diamox serotonin [didn't find anything useful]
I went and helped work on the digging out of the spring and the: carry wood, chop water (sorry) exercise seemed to help. I must say it's nice not to be sick. I can eat all I like.

So I think my future is in shorter duration alpine skiing where I aspire to be an excellent black diamond skiier. (Right now, I'm ok with easy blues). I will go on the Shasta Mountain Guides trip that I have paid for - that will be in June, but I'm not going to do any more solo training trips that exceed a day. I'll just start bringing a pack to the gym and doing the stair climber and also work out on my elliptical here.

As far as actual training and carrying skills I still have some work to do. My rest step is still too slow to use all the time, and even when doing it my right hamstring tends to tire so I'll need to strengthen it more.